


The Dark Side

by KivaTaliana



Series: Swings And Roundabouts [9]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, The Kids Are Grown Up
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2017-11-13
Packaged: 2018-07-10 15:14:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6990676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KivaTaliana/pseuds/KivaTaliana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Georgina Rebecca Holmes discovers a few unsavoury facts and needs to talk to someone, anyone, and several people.  So she learns the uncomfortable truth of her origin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sherlock

**Author's Note:**

> The children are the most interesting thing about this series, so I'm giving them a bit of time.

Sherlock knew his flat had been invaded, but the force that greeted him in the living room was a little surprising. 

"I want to know if I am like my father!" 

"The breaking into my flat is rather consistent but..." 

"I mean my real father....!!" Georgina railed at him. 

Sherlock brushed past his niece to settle back into his armchair, "but... Moriarty never bothered to straighten my door knocker when he did so. What questions do you wish to have answers to?" 

Georgina paused for a moment. "They phoned you!"

"No. But if you are here in such a temper talking about your father, in such a way I can only conclude you mean your biological father; whom Gregory will only talk about on certain levels; and Mycroft will not, considering the fact that he killed him and I suspect personally. You think I am the only one who will give you answers. I ask again; what questions do you want answers to?"

"What do you mean? I want to know about my father!" 

"Tea would be nice," Sherlock said, inclining his head pointedly at the kitchen. "If you do not wish to return home the downstairs flat is neat and tidy, if lacking amenities." 

"What am I, your maid?" 

"No, but you broke in here. If you were invited, I would offer you refreshment; but as you broke it, I think it becomes your responsibility. And if you want to have this discussion, then you most definitely provide me with refreshment." 

Georgina stomped off to the kitchen, turning to look at her uncle, who had steepled his fingers under his chin in a familiar gesture and whose eyes remained fixed most steadily on her. She went about the business of making tea, as she knew her uncle liked it, then brought the tray back to slam it down on the coffee table after a set of uncomfortable minutes. 

"Thank you, so what are your questions? Be specific." 

"I want to know about him." 

"You want to know what I know about him?" 

Georgina nodded. 

"Succinctly, he was brilliant, an intelligence level equal to mine, perhaps almost to your father's," Sherlock raised his hand as she opened her mouth. "For the purposes of this discussion, Mycroft will be your father, because that is what he has been, always; he said that, no one else, not even your dad gave formal consent. Mycroft assumed, for a very good reason, which will come later. Shall I continue?" 

Georgina closed her mouth. 

"Your father had a high intelligence, but that is consistent in the Holmes and clearly, Moriarty, Full-Blood strains, although your dad should not be dismissed from this, Gregory has enough intelligence to speak for himself. However, Moriarty, also had cunning. The intelligence is not enough, it needs a purpose, your father put himself to work in the government, a flawed but capable machine in which he made himself indispensible. He has a need to feel important. Myself, I wanted to be a pirate when I was a child; I like looking at scenes, at people, and seeing what makes it work. That machine is the one I like to deconstruct, the person, the motivation. 

"Moriarty, took a little of both, the criminal side; he liked things to be dark, sometimes dramatic. I know I do that," he said to Georgina's smirk. "And Sally Donovan once said that one day there would be a corpse, and I would be responsible for it. For once she had a good character analysis, if not for the fact I chose not to do that, I might have done it." 

"My father could have chosen." 

"And Moriarty chose, if that is who you mean?" 

"Yes, I think. Dad, I mean Mycroft, killed him."

"I conclude a 93% chance of such an eventuality, all things considered."

Sherlock looked at her steadily. "Do not distance yourself from him, he is your father, never address him as anything other than that. I always call him my brother, do you think I do that to annoy him." 

She shook her head. "To remind you." 

"So I stay with it. He is my brother, I need to remember that. It's become easier." 

"Because of us."

"Family," Sherlock agreed with her. "It works. Now, any questions?" 

"Am I like him?" 

"In what respect, as I said, I suspect his bloodline had a record of intelligence, but a level of cunning, not in a good way." 

"Do I look like him?" 

"In your eyes, quite often, and your jaw line to some extent. He had dark hair, but so did Gregory before you all sent him grey, so that could be an either/or situation. Looks aren't everything though, my brother knows that." 

Georgina glowered at the insult then stopped. 

"What about personality?" 

"Moriarty was somewhat manipulative but in your case that could just be the fact that you are female." 

Georgina slammed her cup down so hard she smashed the saucer underneath, lifting up the cup she threw it at the wall. Tea splashed everywhere. Sherlock surveyed the chaos calmly. 

"That was humour. John says I am not very good at it." 

"You're not." 

"Not being good hints at an ability to improve, I am not displaying that." 

"Basically, you are so bad, you are never going to be able to do it!" 

"Ah, that sounds more logical, I will delete humour, except the best man speech I did for John. That did have good levels of ironic humour. I do it well when it refers to situation when John and I have been together; not so in generic areas." 

"Your comedy styling's are not relevant." 

"Moriarty thought he was funny, clearly you would find him un-humorous."

"Is that a word?" 

"It suits the occasion," Sherlock said. "Ask me some direct questions, that might speed this up and clear up your uncertainty." 

"Was my father, Moriarty, a bad man." 

"If I take bad as I believe you are using it, then yes, he hurt, killed and manipulated people, and often took money for his services. He styled himself as a 'consulting criminal', in fact I think I ended up giving him that title. He was bad." 

"Am I like him?" 

"Not so far that I have seen." 

"Could I be like him?" 

"Everyone has that potential. Do you wish to use this issue as a way to justify such behaviour?" 

"No." 

"Well, then, you are likely to be nothing like him." 

"How can I not be like him?" 

"You can choose not to be. Everyone else has chosen for you, you might as well go with them. You love your parents, knowing that Mycroft is not biologically yours makes you love him less from this point onwards?" 

"No, he's..." 

"Has he treated you any differently than the others because of the fact of your parentage?" 

"I thought I was supposed to be asking questions."

"I offered to answer any questions you had, you were not very interesting, so I thought I would help you answer the questions I calculate you need answers to. Has he treated you any differently than your siblings because of the fact of your parentage?" 

"No." 

"And why do you think that is?" 

Georgina sat down, curling up in her chair, trying to look small, but none of the children ever seemed small to Sherlock. Dimensionally they were, years ago, small, but that didn't encompass the power of their powerful, forthright personalities. It now seemed to him that Georgina was shrinking back into herself. That seemed quite wrong. 

"Don't do that. There is no reason to doubt yourself, or any of the family that loves you because of this." 

Georgina unfurled slightly. Sherlock left it at that. He looked at his niece and waited for her.

"I'm Dad's," she said after a long moment, the intonation of her tone meant she referred to Gregory. "He loves him, and Dad can do no wrong." 

"He can; Mycroft, however, pretends to be blind to it. He always says he doesn't care, but he does. He cared about himself, then he cared about me, then he cared about Gregory - who was convenient at the time and picked out to brood in a calculating fashion - and as a result, he cared about you, and your siblings." 

"They're his blood." 

"As you pointed out, you are Gregory's and in the grand scheme of Mycroft's world that is all that matters. He also raised you, and you often turned to him to talk to, rather than your Dad." 

"He listened." 

Sherlock shrugged, and reached for his tea. "He may have had concerns about inherent behaviour, but despite the eyes and possible hints of colouring you are not Moriarty, how can you be? You never knew him." 

Then by the look in Sherlock's eyes he was clearly about to tune her out. 

"Your father will be here soon, perhaps you should also talk to him."


	2. Greg

Georgina shivered, although the heaters in the car were working, the whirring blast of air ran over her, but it didn't seem to touch her skin. Tilting her head she looked at her omega father, who wasn't looking at her; his eyes, staring out into the middle distance, were seeing something else. Something which, despite all her dramatics earlier, she didn't want him seeing. 

"Does Dad know this?" 

"Some of it," Greg said calmly. "Not all of it, some of it, but not all of it. I probably didn't need to say it." He dropped his head, staring down into his lap. "He could work some of it out, and he wouldn't want the details." 

"So why am I privy to them?" she snapped, not feeling very proud as her father flinched. 

"Because you want to know," Greg said. "I think you need the truth more than he does. There are things I am not telling you, that I would never tell anyone about that time. There are things I told Sherlock, things I told John, and I very much doubt anyone who learnt anything broke that confidence." 

"If I hadn't of... thrown such a fit...." Georgina paused as Greg smiled. "...You'd never had told me." 

"Maybe not. I know we didn't discuss it, but your parentage wasn't exactly a secret," Greg said as he clenched his fingers together taking a deep breath as his mind started to re-live many a bad moment in the attic of Moriarty's house. "And I don't want to feel like the exhibit I was in that house, kept for whatever reason." 

"You said he wanted to breed on you," Georgina choked on the old fashioned words, a throwback from when breeding of Full-Bloods was carefully controlled. Older members of the castes never took the words personally, it was just the term used and both her parents used it, in reference to their own relationship. But it seemed wrong for her to use it now. 

"He did, and he did so, but that's not your fault, it's not mine, and it's not Mycroft's." 

"What you just said..." 

"Happened," Greg said, his voice flat, but calm. "It happened, and then your uncle found me and they had been trying to find me since I had been kidnapped." 

"William thinks this is all his issue." 

"He did watch it happen. I pushed him away to save his life and that ripped the bond, and it's hard to get over that. Do you remember when you were a little girl." 

"Yes, of course I do." 

None of the children seemed to forget anything. Conversations that happened months ago, with promises and information, came back to haunt him as the children repeated words back at him. Gregory had, in the end, with so many children doing that to him, worked out a system of telling them things, so if it did come back to haunt him, the repeating of the words would tell him if it was what he had said. None of the kids could pull the wool over his eyes, not really. 

"Why do you think my journal is excessively full?" Mycroft has asked him after Greg had mentioned it to him. "I can't record everything in my mind, so I keep certain things aside. You are working in a opposite way, memorising certain things to guide yourself through it. Between us it should work." 

It rather had. They managed to work the children very well between them both. Things like this, however, upset the balance. Greg always knew this would. There was no real way to hide the truth from any of them. Will had seen it, Nathanial had been born in it, and Georgina was a result of it. Adam, Imogen and Joshua were the most unaffected, but also observant enough to see the undercurrents that ran between the older children. 

Greg hadn't realised just how hard his hands had locked together until Georgina's hand wormed between them. 

"Dad!" 

The word was a plea, demand and worried query all at the same time. 

"I'm fine," Greg said, forcing his fingers to relax and Georgina's hand grabbed his. 

"I didn't want to upset you." 

"I'm the only one ever upset by this," Greg said. "Your father will just overthrow the dictatorship in a small country in retaliation, and Sherlock will raid the cold case files to find something to do. I'm the only one that just.... sits and looks at what happens." 

Even as he said it, he knew it wasn't true. But the rest of them could only look at a small part of it. Greg had the whole of it. The rest of them made up the jigsaw of his mind and as far as he knew none of them were brave enough to put the pieces together. Quite frankly, he didn't blame them, which was why he had no intention of telling his daughter everything, just enough for her to understand. 

He had hovered on the brink of it. For years he had debated what parts of it he needed to tell her. Some of his pretend conversations had been gentle, others rather brutal, then he had decided that he couldn't work with a pretend idea, because it was not going to be the reality. All he could do was prepare his own mind to relive the horrors of that year. And he had hovered on the precipice of telling Georgina the ultimate truth, but on the flip side, he had made a vow to never tell, to be the only person that could really know the reality, and it was to die with him. He had to make it utterly and completely end at that point, which could be his only true revenge. 

"Are you all right?" he asked his daughter, turning to look at her properly for the first time. Her eyes didn't have Moriarty's flicker this time. She blinked and looked out of the windscreen. 

"I'm angry," she said, with the utter honesty her omega father had given her. 

"You've always known this. Not the intimate facts but you've never been lied to. Just because we don't discuss it doesn't mean to say that it's been ignored." 

"I know, I suppose... just having it there, suddenly having to focus on it." 

"It could have been handled better. Maybe if I had spoken to you about it sooner, or something, it wouldn't be so bad now." 

"I think it would be bad whenever it came up." 

"True, but I do wish that the alphas in my life would realise that it's not about them, and all to do with me." 

Georgina winced at the slight reprimand. They had all stalked around the house yelling at each other. Her for one reason, Will for another and Mycroft because he didn't want Greg upset. It was only when Greg had retaliated that Georgina had run outside and got in her car, Will had retreated upstairs and Mycroft had hoisted Greg off to his study and fed him a large brandy. 

Greg accepted the care from Mycroft, because he was less demanding than the children, and knew when to rein his possessiveness in, even though Greg could see it seething under his skin. When Greg had proposed to go and find his daughter Mycroft had opened his laptop to presumably locate her. Greg had snarled,

"Are you seriously saying you don't know where she's gone?" 

Mycroft had lowered the laptop in embarrassment. "Not necessarily." 

The tone of voice had made Greg smile and set off in his own car feeling a little more confident, and then five minutes later slightly certain that Mycroft had done it on purpose. 

"Sorry Dad," Georgina said now. Greg blinked. 

"I don't want you to be sorry, although it's nice that you are. What you need to realise is that in the end it had nothing to do with you and everything to do with me. I can't tell you any more than that." 

"But it was to get at Dad, and Uncle Sherlock." 

"So it seemed. I was the easiest form of revenge." 

"Or I was," Georgina commented, staring out at the middle distance. There wasn't much to look at there, only memories for Greg and speculation for her. Greg turned to watch her instead and the scrutiny brought her gaze back to him. 

"I'm here permanently, a reminder of what he did, and what he could do." 

"He paid for it in the end," Greg said. There was no point blurring that fact either. 

"Uncle Sherlock said that Dad probably killed him." 

"He's probably right, not that anyone's asked your father about it." 

Georgina wondered briefly if she should, then dismissed that completely. Did she really want such a fact confirmed. If nothing else, she didn't want to look at Mycroft and know he was a murderer. She knew her parents, and quite a number of their close friends had all done things that they didn't want to bring up. 

"93% probability, Uncle Sherlock said." 

"Sounds a good guess," Greg agreed. "We need to get home. Adam's doing fajitas." 

"Nice," Georgina said. 

"And you need to apologise to Will." 

"What the hell for?! He yelled just as much as me." 

Greg turned and glared at her disapprovingly. 

"You said to him that it would have been better if Moriarty had taken him, which is not true, and since he was privy to all that went on he knows just how bad it was for me. He's already been told he's going to apologise for saying you should have never been born." 

Georgina snorted. Greg continued to glare in that way that made his children and his alpha cower. 

"I don't care if you don't mean it, you had just better sound like you do when you say it, and I know you are both capable of that." 

Georgina subsided into silence, knowing that was not delivered as any sort of compliment, and although she galled at the idea of having to apologise to her brother, she mentally started to compile a speech to do exactly that. 

"Do you want me to drive?" Georgina said as she noticed her father's hands shaking. 

"No," Greg said, fumbling to start the ignition. He eventually got himself together. "I'm fine, we can pick up your car in the morning. Let's go home."


	3. The Boys

"Well, that was...." Adam said dropping uninvited into Will's bean bag. Both Will and Nathanial glared at him. Will had propped himself up on the pillows at the headboard with Bee tucked into his side. Nathanial sat at the end of the bed with Panda pulled to his chest. Adam regarded the pair of them carefully. Will looked excessively hyped up, and Nathanial, to Adam, looked as if he had taken the brunt of the aggression. 

He didn't deserve it, Adam mused. He couldn't be blamed for being born in the middle of the situation. That wasn't something in Nate's control, but he had been a target for it since he was a baby. He had grown up with it, therefore it was part of his lot in life as far as he was concerned. Adam decided that Will knew that his behaviour wasn't fair, but he couldn't seem to help himself. 

That analysis done he slouched down into the bean bag and waited. He had been entirely undisturbed by the noise and shouting, due to two facts; one, the house generally teemed with noise and two, his beta nature made him the most unruffleable member of the household. 

"What's so funny?" Will demanded as Adam gave a smile. 

"Just wondering if unruffleable is a word." 

"No," Nathanial said. "Unflappable is probably better."

"That also works, but the imagery isn't quite so good," Adam said. "Ruffling is better than flapping." 

Nathanial blinked but decided to let the matter drop. Will, on the other hand, couldn't seem to. 

"What's that got to do with anything anyway? Since when have you cared about English, or grammar." 

"I don't. You really are ruffled though." 

"Of course I am, I was there when it all happened." 

"So was Nate," Adam said entirely unruffled by Will's aggression. "To a lesser degree, although it's more to do with our parents than you, Nate and George." 

"Still, she's not a Holmes!" 

Even Adam tensed at that. "That's a low blow, Will. She's a part of this family, you can't go quibbling over a snag in the biology." 

Will didn't say anything as Nathanial nodded, but didn't say anything. 

"You're more pissed off that she is an alpha than anything else," Adam concluded. 

"Imo and Josh are alphas as well, I'm not pissed off at them," Will said. Adam raised his eyebrows, wondering why that might be relevant. 

"Actually I think Imo's a beta but high on the scale." 

"And you're just averagely in the middle." 

Adam's eyebrows dropped a fraction. Nathanial looked slightly shocked at the venom in his elder brother's tone. 

"I no doubt am, but sitting happily in the middle of the see-saw doesn't make me an idiot. And as far as I can see, yes you are the most screwed up of us, but not the most involved. In actual fact I think the only reason I'm here is because Dad wanted to get past what happened to produce Georgie, which in the grand scheme of things is not a valid reason to have a child. Anyway in one way and another, we are all here, and we have always been aware of this, although no one really has a discussion about it. Nor do I think that means we are ignoring.... What's up?" 

Adam paused and turned at the sound of shuffling. Joshua stood in the doorway, his maths text book held to his chest. 

"What's up?" Adam asked again. 

"I need help with my maths." 

That would normally have been Will's department but he didn't look ready to pitch in. Adam held up his hand to beckon his younger brother. 

"Come on then, let's have a look." 

Josh looked at Adam then glanced at Will uncertainly. When Will didn't react he went into the room and handed the book over to Adam, who straightened that and the sheet of paper Joshua was working on into his lap. Josh hovered next to him, eyeing Will and Nathanial curiously for a moment. 

"You two talk amongst yourselves," Adam told the pair on the bed then went back to the text book, looking it over for a moment and comparing it with Josh's work. Will and Nathanial looked at each other but didn't talk, they just stared, then Nathanial slowly moved, unfurling himself from his position and heading up the bed towards Will to sit next to him. The alpha didn't decline the advance, and the tension went down a notch. 

Joshua watched and then looked back to Adam who pointed at something in the book. 

"You've muddled this I think, take that over there and start here." 

Joshua somehow manoeuvred himself onto the bean bag, and using his pencil scribbled onto the piece of paper. 

For a moment the focus on the room was Adam and Josh as they studied the text book and Josh wobbled precariously on the edge of the bean bag. 

"See, you need to start here, and move this over to there," Adam said patiently. 

"Right," Josh said, and scribbled on the paper under Adam's supervision. There was further scribbling as Josh worked on the equations until his frown smoothed. "Oh, I see." 

Then he paused, slowly sliding off the bean bag, gently bumping to the floor as Imogen appeared in the doorway of the bedroom. She looked at the boys curiously. It was a world she wasn't quite part of, the boys. who all clustered like a pack at times. And it was hard to sometimes be part of the girls, as Georgina had been accepting of her presence but there was always something in the alpha girl that made her look down at her younger sister. 

"Dad's rung, they are on the way home." 

"I'll cook, we've got fajitas," Adam said. "Are you okay with that now?" 

"Yes," Josh said from the floor. "I can manage now." 

"I'll do the cheese, I've done my English, and French," Imogen said. 

Adam reached out and ruffled her hair. "Come on then poppet."

Josh uncurled himself, and gathering up his book, paper and pencil followed in Adam's wake, which was often the calmest place to be. He took his younger siblings downstairs, aware that they were both disturbed by the storms in the house. Will and Nathanial looked at each other. 

"Dad said you would have to apologise to Georgie."

Will glowered. "I know that." 

"It wasn't her fault you know. Not even dad's, or Uncle Sherlock's, it was just..." 

Will raised his eyebrows. 

"What happened," Nathanial eventually concluded. Not the most satisfactory answer but it was the only one he could think of. Plus it was accurate. Everything had happened, and that made everything like it was now. Nothing more could be said on the subject. Will said nothing, the only sound that could be heard was the crunch of gravel and the low hum of an engine as a car drew up. 

"I don't really remember," Nathanial confessed. "I just remember liking your smell."

That made Will smile. Nathanial listened to the noises downstairs. 

"Better get it over with quickly." 

Will pulled a face, but he also knew Nathanial was right and as one of the two omegas in the house, he'd make it happen, just as their father was no doubt about to make Georgina apologise to him. Very slowly Will put aside Bee and got up. Nathanial followed, putting Panda next to Bee in a not so subtle hint. 

Silently they went out of the room to head downstairs.


End file.
